An online journal of commentary, analysis, and dignified rants on national security issues. Other posts on home life, annoying things, and a vast 'other' formerly on The Dignified Rant: Home Edition, will be posted here and clearly marked.

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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Military Review, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Stealth Fleet

Right now, our carriers with manned aircraft are still a tremendous asset. But as the years go by, cheap precision missiles will erode their value. Several decades in the future, carriers may be too big and expensive to risk enterring an enemy's array of sensors that can detect and guide missiles to overwhelm a carrier's defensive systems. Since carriers last five decades or more, the carriers we have now could last through the period of their fighting value and phase out as their vulnerability becomes too great. Should we build large carriers anymore?

Well, with the new LHA-R class of amphibious warfare platforms we are building these smaller aircraft carriers, in addition to the Ford Class behemoths planned for the future. These new amphibious warfare platforms will weigh in at over 50,000 tons when they start joining the fleet in 2013. From the second link:

In addition to its complement of 1,800 Marines et. al., LHA-R ships will rely on a mix of MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors; CH-53E/K heavy transport, MH-60R/S multi-role utility, and AH-1W/Z attack helicopters; plus 8-20 fixed wing F-35B Lightning II STOVL aircraft, to support amphibious operations. The current ranges under discussion would give the LHA-R a balanced carrying capability for about 30-35 aircraft in varying combinations, or less if more of the larger MV-22s or CH-53s are chosen.

These will outclass anybody else's actual fleet carriers. And we don't even really count them as carriers. Yet they'd do perfectly fine as carriers in a pinch and would be able to carry out various escort and ASW tasks quite well and free up the big decks for offensive action. They will be able to lead expeditionary strike groups.

Really, by putting a small carrier into the expeditionary strike group, this ship will add another piece together in my proposal some years ago for a Marine Expeditionary Battle Force. When published, the article stripped out some graphics I used to keep my word count down to focus on the main point of looking at Army and Marine roles. See this page for the outline of a MEBF and other supporting material about what I thought would help the Marines in the rapid intervention role.

We just need the ships carrying the unit sets to allow an ESG to essentially carry a full Marine Expeditionary Brigade instead of the much smaller MEU.